6th Age of Greyfeather
6th Age of Greyfeather (Year 1006-) Age of Uncertainty The Dark Alliance has gained control of the throne and various factions have sprang up around the land, either siding with the Dark Alliance or battling against them. Through it all, Whitefeather, the land seven days sail to the east, has struggled to build its nation from the crumbling ruins it once was. Formerly a part of the main continent that was destroyed by the Great Sundering in 825, Whitefeather is really nothing more than a smattering of small villages and self-sufficient farm lands. There is a Queen on the throne, but she sits in the capital city of Aurora, unable to gather enough power to settle the land properly. And with King Jenek no longer in power, she has no allies. This is where the 6th Age begins. Ruled by the wizard, Debren The Dark, this faction is the most powerful in the land at the moment. With the ascension of Lord Vecter, Debren has stepped into the void and chosen to make it the land he always felt it should be. The Dark Alliance began in 923, when Lord Vecter was sent away by his former wife, Samantha Kensak in favor of a drow ranger, the only drow elf in the land, Alac Auvryndar. Samantha had met Alac when she first became the queen and she fell in love with the noble, quiet drow elf. She was promised to Lord Vecter and would not risk the kingdom on an affair, so she sent the drow away and married Vecter, as she felt she should. Vecter had served as her consort for almost one hundred years, acting as the commander of her guard and giving her good strategic advice, especially during the War of the Shadow Queen. He was a good soldier and a good husband and father, but Samantha could never forget Alac, nor did she. Vecter was totally unaware of this fact. In 923, King Christopher formed an adventuring party to travel to Whitefeather, to deal with a cult that was trying to bring a major demon lord into the land. That demon lord was named Reldayxus. The Overseer had tasked him with making sure the demon lord arrived, but that it was not allowed to escape. Had it, it would’ve devoured most of the people in its wake. Vecter agreed to join this band of adventurers to lend his sword to a worthy cause. During this adventure, Alac arrived in Whitefeather to aid the cause as well. Christopher had asked for Alac’s aid, but the stipulation was that he meet with Samantha afterward. Samantha agreed to this meeting. Once Reldayxus was turned over to the Overseer, Vecter returned home to find Samantha gone. She returned two days later and asked him to leave. She would be asking for a decree of divorce and she would be marrying Alac Auvryndar. Vecter flew into a rage over this, but he did not slay either party. Instead, he blamed Christopher for this development and left his long time home so that he could plot his revenge. His revenge came in the form of the Dark Alliance. Knowing that King Christopher had made the land into what it was currently, he wanted to turn everything upside-down, showing the good king that evil was just as powerful as good, and chose to use Christopher’s own words against him. Without evil, there can be no good. During this build up of operatives that would help him take the throne of Greyfeather from King Christopher, Vecter met a rather untimely end, one that would’ve been disastrous for the Dark Alliance, had he not done something back 50 years before that changed the course of history. As a paladin, he made a solemn vow to the Overseer to always protect Samantha and Greyfeather. A vow made to a god that is not fulfilled means the paladin, should they die, will rise as a skeletal knight...a Death Knight. He needed a base of operations to form this alliance so he chose Eventhil, a port city in the northwest of the land. He had to be as far from Greyfeather City as he could get to avoid detection until the time to strike was right. Unfortunately for Vecter, he overestimated his abilities when it came to combat. He walked into Eventhil alone and attempted to remove the mayor and his guard there, but was unsuccessful, as they were nearly 100 strong and he was alone. He rose the next day, laying on the sand of the beach in the north of the city, but he was no longer a knight in service to the Overseer. Instead, he had risen as a Death Knight and was now under the control of Reldayxus, the newest god in the heavens. The new god informed Vecter that he would be the Chosen and gave him additional powers to go along with his already increased undead powers. Within two hours, he had slain every guard and all of the hierarchy of Eventhil alone. To begin with, the alliance was very weak. Very few thugs and toughs wanted anything to do with a death knight. Over time, however, he began to find solid recruits who didn’t care that he was undead, and they began to perform tasks for him to further his cause. By 952, he had only recruited around 25 members and was beginning to believe he would have to do this himself, but another ally joined the ranks that he least expected. A wizard by the name of Debren The Dark arrived in Eventhil and offered his services as a recruiter and lieutenant to the Dark Alliance. Vecter knew that this wizard, who had changed his name, was just the man he needed to make this plan work. Debren The Dark became the new name for a wizard of fame and renown. His real name was Basquel The Red. A former friend of King Christopher, Basquel had a falling out with the king as to how to rule the land and make things right. Basquel considered the king to be soft and too kind, even to his enemies. In Vecter, he felt that maybe the land would finally find that discipline it lacked under Christopher’s watch, so he joined the Dark Alliance. Vecter had respect for the wizard, but he didn’t feel that magic was the way to take the crown. He accepted Debren’s help because he needed to focus on efforts to secure Eventhil and move his plan forward, so he left the day-to-day operations to Debren. The wizard proved to be an excellent recruiter and soon the Alliance was growing. Debren found hearty adventurers with an axe to grind against the crown and turned them into stalwart operatives of the alliance. All he had to do was pay them handsomely for their deeds. He used Vecter’s coin to do that. For the next fifty years, Debren built the Dark Alliance into what it was, but he constantly gave Vecter the credit for it, to soothe the death knight into believing he was the true hero here. It was a manipulation ploy that worked like a charm. Debren knew that keeping Vecter happy was the way to make his mark on this alliance, and hopefully usurp the death knight at some point. Though a very powerful arch-mage, Debren knew that Reldayxus had granted Vecter powers that would make him very dangerous if confronted, so he placated the death knight and tried to find a way to neutralize him at a later time. A group came along that was brought to his attention by an underling named Olen Wilks, a wizard who had served him well for several years. Olen said that the group he was mentoring in Tannebaugh might be some of the best he’d seen. Debren was intrigued and asked for continuous reports. The reports didn’t lie. They handled many delicate and notsodelicate missions with nothing but success. This is when Debren took them under his wing. For the next year and a half, he gave them mission after mission to perform, and though their methods weren’t orthodox, they success they garnered was enough to give Debren hope that he could use them to rid himself of Vecter and then place himself on the throne. The key to this plan was the wizard of the group, Delinarra, also known as Delilah. He mentored her in the ways of wizardry and even allowed her to take on a delicate mission alone, which she handled with ease. In 1007, this group finally got to Greyfeather City and to the crown, which was the ultimate goal. It was when they arrived that things took a very strange turn. The moment that it was discovered that Samantha was not really ruling Greyfeather, that the bastard son of the former King Christopher was, the new Father of the Gods, Dragokar, arrived. He commanded Vecter to come with him, that he would be ascending to the heavens to be a god and then told Debren that the fate of Greyfeather was now in his hands as he always wanted. With that, Vecter and Dragokar vanished and Debren was king. Now Debren could make the land into what he hoped it would always be, powerful.